Daily News Briefs

Photonics.comSep 2005Photonic Products Group Inc., a Northvale, N.J.-based manufacturer of products for the photonics industry, announced today that Luke P. La Valle Jr. has been appointed to its board of directors. La Valle is president and CEO of American Capital Management Inc., an investment portfolio management services firm he founded in 1980. . . . Semicoa of Costa Mesa, Calif., a manufacturer of silicon photodiodes used in medical imaging, homeland security and military aerospace applications, announced the promotion of Bernd Tabbert to director of engineering. The company says Tabbert will be responsible for expanding its emerging optoelectronics technology and managing the design efforts for high-reliability silicon bipolar transistors. Prior to joining Semicoa two years ago, Tabbert was a laser test engineer for Silicon Valley-based startup telecom company Gemfire Corp. . . . Optical Metrology Innovations, a manufacturer of photoreflectance spectrometers for front-end silicon and compound semiconductor metrology with headquarters in Cork, Ireland, has appointed Bill Flecky as vice president of sales for North America. Flecky was previously CEO of Bede Scientific's US subsidiary. . . . Lausanne, Switzerland-based Synova, a maker of water-jet guided laser technology for the semiconductor, electronics, flat panel display and industrial micromachining industries, announced it has received an order for its laser dicing system (LDS) 300 from a California-based semiconductor company, marking the first time the LDS 300 will be deployed for low-k wafer laser dicing. The tool is slated for installation at the customer's fab in Malaysia later this fall.

A sub-field of photonics that pertains to an electronic device that responds to optical power, emits or modifies optical radiation, or utilizes optical radiation for its internal operation. Any device that functions as an electrical-to-optical or optical-to-electrical transducer. Electro-optic often is used erroneously as a synonym.

The technology of generating and harnessing light and other forms of radiant energy whose quantum unit is the photon. The science includes light emission, transmission, deflection, amplification and detection by optical components and instruments, lasers and other light sources, fiber optics, electro-optical instrumentation, related hardware and electronics, and sophisticated systems. The range of applications of photonics extends from energy generation to detection to communications and...